“There’s a real buzz in King’s College, made stronger somehow by the presence of the band’s latest and most high profile supporter Noel Gallagher. Of course Shack gigs these days are full of 40+s who still can’t believe Shack have actually turned up at the gig.”
“There’s a real buzz in King’s College, made stronger somehow by the presence of the band’s latest and most high profile supporter Noel Gallagher. Of course Shack gigs these days are full of 40+s who still can’t believe Shack have actually turned up at the gig.”
Shack on tour
King’s College London 15th May
Rescue Rooms Nottingham 22nd May
The Casa Liverpool 2nd June
It’s the start of a whole tour by Shack, and at the start I’m struggling to get to any of the gigs. The Liverpool one turns out to be the night before the FA Cup Final, causing some big decisions to be made. Some opt to go to the gig and leave for Cardiff straight afterwards. But somehow I make the decision to get to Cardiff the day before. I’m getting blase about Shack gigs now. It’s not so long ago that a Shack gig seemed such a rarity you couldn’t pass it up. Now I’m picking and choosing. We can do London, we can do Nottingham. The team comes first.
A week later and I’m wondering what led me to make such a stupid decision. There’s a real buzz in King’s College, made stronger somehow by the presence of the band’s latest and most high profile supporter Noel Gallagher. Of course Shack gigs these days are full of 40+s who still can’t believe Shack have actually turned up at the gig. To those who’ve followed the band since The Pale Fountains, through The Strands and the various Shack incarnations, the mere presence of the band is a wonderful thing. But the London gig also has its fair share of 20+s wanting to follow Noel’s lead, most of them looking more than a little surprised at the number of bald heads around them. London Shack gigs tend to have a feeling of the ‘scouse nation abroad’ about them too, with London-based Liverpudlians congregating to acknowledge fellow exiles.
There’s a poor start to the night when I get there. Tommy Scott’s new outfit, The Drellas are on and they’re bloody awful. Is it the sound, I wonder? Surely Tommy (latterly of Space) can give us something better than this? Sadly for Tommy it turns out the sound is actually pretty good. The excellent Jim Noir makes up for Tommy’s lacklustre performance, his mixture of punchy, poppy and somewhat laconic songs making for a good intro. It’s easy to predict big things for Jim.
And so to Shack. This band really gels. They’re not trying to break new ground. Their main influences still show through – Arthur Lee, Miles Davis, Paul Simon – yet they’ve matured as a band, and this line-up has really found its identity. That psychedelic, summery feeling is still there but it’s more upbeat than before. Pete Wilkinson makes a big difference, he seems like a very strong presence in the band. John’s songs are a more prominent part of the set now, and his songwriting is an integral part of each new Shack album. The brass section really adds something to the live gigs too. God those boys can play. Shack gigs without the brass section tend to lack something, but the regular crowd make up for it with impromptu backing from the floor.
Shack always play a combination of older stuff from Waterpistol (95), The Magical World of the Strands (98) and HMS Fable (99) through to ….Here’s Tom with the Weather (03) and now the newly released The Corner of Miles and Gil. Of the new songs, Black and White is an instant crowd-pleaser, and Butterfly and Shelley Brown also grip hold pretty quickly. An up-tempo, feverish atmosphere gathered pace and a short encore left everyone demanding more. Blinding songs, an urgent, passionate approach throughout. This was the sort of gig that made you want to take a month off work and see every date on the tour.
So it was that we found ourselves in Nottingham for the last gig of the tour. A perfectly decent gig, this one was, well, almost a bit too slick. The confidence now oozes out of the band, and this one felt more like a performance than a party. The Nottingham audience wanted to watch and admire rather than participate, and the usually talkative Mick Head eventually gave up on trying to get any conversation going. The band played on, the audience loved it, but the gig lacked the spark that makes a Shack gig special. With no brass section, it had a real end of tour, end of season feel to it, but for once you could feel sure that this band would be back. This time around Shack are enjoying themselves too much for it not to last.
The immediacy of the next gig took everyone by surprise though. Just a few weeks later and Shack are at The Casa playing a fund-raiser for the Anthony Walker Foundation, an organisation set up to promote integration after the racist murder of Liverpool teenager Anthony Walker. Promoted only by word of mouth and on the Shacknet site (a true community of Shack believers), this gig attracted a combination of friends, family and hard core Shack fans. The Casa, an old familiar late night drinking club, was taken over by a group of sacked dockers after the historic dispute of 1995-98 and is still very much an authentic slice of Liverpool. The back room has retained the feel of the old club. Your feet can still stick to the floor on a good night and whatever’s on you somehow always drink far more than you intend. Shack took to the stage at around midnight (and by ‘stage’ I mean the raised bit in the corner of the room), making for a heady mixture of passionate renditions of old familiar songs and confident, energetic versions of new ones. The brass section was back, and nearly two hours later they looked like they were prepared to carry on until the sun came up.
This is a band that LOVES to play. It loves to whip its audience up into a dizzy, feverish state, but at times can barely cope with the ecstasy of the crowd urging it on. There’s a particularly affectionate nature to Shack’s home crowd and when Mick and John’s sister Joanne joined them to sing a beautiful, emotionally charged version of Daniella the reaction was one of awe. And when John sang London Town, just the man himself for once with no guitar, he held the attention of a somewhat inebriated bunch. But this local, parochial crowd is demanding as well as passionate, and there were times in this gig when Iain Templeton tried to cool the temperature, urging a little less fever from the Shack aficionados at the front. You can tell how much it means to this band by their reaction after particular songs. Fist shaking, hugging, high fives all take place in between songs. They’re like a football team that’s practised a move in training. When it comes off live they celebrate with an ecstatic, proud satisfaction.
When Shack finish off their set with A House is Not a Motel there’s nothing quite like it. Don’t ask for anything new from Shack. They don’t experiment with anything different; they just get better at what they do. And what they do is brilliant. They’re sticking with it and they’ll still be writing stunning songs and strumming their guitars in a corner of a Liverpool pub in 25 years time. And they’ll still sound beautiful.
Rumours abound of Mick bringing out a solo album. In the meantime Cup of Tea is out on 10th July and will be the second single taken from the new album The Corner of Miles and Gil.
Words: Catharine Long.